Let Me Call You Sweetheart
by AngeloftheMorning1978
Summary: AU Historical 1940 WW2. Norma Bates runs a boarding house for young women. With America on the brink of war with Europe, her son Norman joins the Air Force. Much to her displeasure, Colonel Alex Romero refuses to let her son out of his service contract. Then tragedy strikes. Emma is a tenant at the Bates Boarding house. Dylan is in the Air Force. Norma and Alex together.
1. Chapter 1

**I need to preface this story by saying this is an AU historical piece. Having said that, this time period was subject to a lot of racism and sexism that just isn't present today. Thank God. If I were to ignore it or white wash it, it would be like saying this type of injustice didn't happen. So, I've decided to embrace it and make it apart of the story because it's real and it happened back then.**

 **We can't be offended by it because these were just the attitudes of people that were wrong, but they happened. Also, in the next chapter, you'll see how Norma Bates runs her boarding house and you'll see how controlled women were and how they were expected to behave. Again, feeding into the sexism of the day.**

 **It's not right, but it was accurate.**

 **Let Me Call You Sweetheart**

 _San Fransisco, California_

 _February 1940_

1.

~ "It's you." the Colonel's voice was groggy and Norma had almost kept walking. She felt stunned by all she had seen at the hospital. The sudden fire at the barracks had sent the dark sky ablaze and drawn out concerned citizens from their homes just to watch the horrible beauty of the flames against the darkness.

"Colonel Romero?" she said weakly although she wasn't at all surprised to see him. Nothing would surprise her anymore. He looked pale and almost greenish in the gurney. His body awash in a white hospital gown and covered in white sheets and blankets. The once formidable Air Force Colonel seemed almost small in the chaos of the hospital now.

"You look very pretty." he said in a dull, dry voice. His eyes looking lazily over her as she peered at him. "You're all in red."

Norma looked down at the coat she'd hastily thrown on over her night dress. She'd been in such a hurry to get to the hospital that she hadn't bothered to dress properly. It was three in the morning and her hair was a mess and her she looked and felt worn out.

But he wasn't lying, her coat was red. He must have recognized her from the last time they spoke. She'd worn the same spring coat then to.

"I had to get here in a hurry, Colonel." she said deciding to humor the officer she had so despised a few days ago. It seemed so long ago now. So much had happened.

"Why?" Romero asked.

Norma didn't want to talk about it. She didn't have the strength. Clearly Colonel Romero had no idea what was happening. He'd been a victim of the fire in his own barracks the same as these men were. He'd just been drugged by the doctors to forget pain as well as events. Officers no doubt got faster and better treatment. Although it was mystery as to why he'd been left in the hallway like this.

The hospital becoming so overcrowded with the waves of injured men.

"There was a fire." she told him sadly. "A fire at the barracks. My son Norman was injured. They won't let me see him."

She knew he wouldn't remember this conversation so she kept her voice soft and sweet. Like she was talking to a child.

"When?" Romero asked. His brows furrowing with concussion. She smiled and moved a little closer. He wasn't at all like the man she spoke with a few days ago.  
"Tonight." she said. "It was very bad."

"Was anyone else hurt?" he asked lazily. "You have to make sure everyone is alright."

"I will." she promised hastily and covered his chest a little better with his blanket. Her own instincts to care for and protect kicking in despite her hatred for him.

"They took Norman to surgery right after he got here." she confessed. "I'm really scared. I don't know how bad it is."

"If they took him to surgery…" Romero said slowly. "That means his chances for survival are better than most."

"Really?" she asked skeptically. She felt his hands reach over the covers and finding hers. His hands were strong, but held hers gently.

"Yeah." he said with a sigh. "They wouldn't waste their time on a patient they didn't think would survive. They would just red X him and move on. If they took him into OR, that means his chances are good. These doctors have a lot of… experience working on battlefield wounds. They've worked on a lot of bodies."

Norma knew he was trying to comfort her, but it sounded macabre. Yet, it was also a good thing to consider. Romero, drugged or not, probably knew what he was talking about in these situations.

"You're a very pretty lady. You need to go home." he sighed weakly. "You shouldn't be around all these enlisted men… I… I'll talk to them. I'll tell them not to bother you."

"It's okay, Colonel." she smiled. "I'm going to find the nurse. "See about getting you a room."

"Is this real?" he asked.

"Yes, its' real. Wish it wasn't, but its' real." she told him.

"I'm glad its' real." he said before drifting off. His breathing becoming heavy and sedated.

She smoothed out his blanket a little better and for the moment, all was forgiven between them. She'd forgiven the cold, stoic officer who'd stubbornly refused to release her son from signing up for the Air Force. For just a moment she forgave the newly weakened Colonel for telling her that her son was eighteen years old and a grown man who could serve his country.

She'd forgiven the harsh words they had exchanged in his office when he refused to nullify Norman's contract with the Air Force and claimed it wasn't suitable for a young airman's mother to come and try and get him out of his duty. That Mrs. Bates could see herself out and not to come back.

The Colonel wasn't that same man just now and if she couldn't look after her son, she could at least look after him. Colonel Romero didn't appear to have anyone. He'd been left alone in a hallway and he should at least be in a room where he could rest.

She finally managed to find the proper nurse who once she explained that the man in the hallway was Colonel Alex Romero, the same man who's base had caught fire that night, action was swiftly taken.

Two orderlies and a nurse moved his gurney to a room and a doctor pulled Norma aside and explained to her that Colonel Romero had broken his leg while helping evacuate airmen from the base.

"Sounds like something he would do." Norma nodded.

"We didn't realize he'd been left in the hallway, ma'am." the doctor said. "All this confusion."

Norma nodded and could feel herself getting sleepy again. She wanted to check and see if Norman was out of surgery. She felt the Colonel was correct when he said the chances were good if they saw him right away. After all, he'd probably seen hundreds of casualties in his years of service.

"He's been through worse." Norma said without knowing she was talking out loud.

She ensured the Colonel was put in a room with dignity. Even going to the trouble of helping the nurse change his hospital gown while he slept on. She didn't trust these hospital people.

They all looked at her nervously to. As if they were a little afraid of her now and she wasn't sure why.

She was given a form to fill out and it felt like she was writing in her sleep after so much had happened. She filled out a few dozen forms that night before someone from downstairs found her and said Norman was out of surgery.

~ Her son looked pale and fragile in the recovery room, but the doctor's pronounced that he would live.

"He'd been partially crushed by falling debris." the surgeon had explained. "It was a blessing he'd survived at all."

Norma smoothed her son's hair back and felt his skin to make sure he was still warm.

"You should go home, ma'am. Get some rest." the nurse told her. "We can call you if there are any changes."

~ **Two Days Later…**

~ Norma Bates was impressed by the ambulance that had arrived to bring her son back from the hospital. The fire that had hospitalized him was still making news, not because of the ten men who'd lost their lives, but because it had so crippled the potential war effort.

Even if their would be no grand march into Europe, the fire had severely dampened the moral of the city. Days later, she could still remember the way the fires had burned the dark sky away. How eerie it had seemed to have something so beautiful and so deadly that close to the city. To have her son be touched by it was even more traumatic.

She'd gone to see Norman everyday since his release from surgery but it was clear the doctors didn't think he was ready to be released. He seemed almost drunk from the pain killers they had given him.

The Air Force hadn't waisted anytime at all in clearing away the ruined barracks where the fire had started. She'd read just that morning that construction would be starting soon to replace the building. Never mind that so many of their airmen wouldn't be joining them in the war effort. They were burned or broken men now. Men who were hardly even men. Her son Norman was just eighteen and couldn't be counted as old enough to be apart of these grand war plans.

She'd formally requested, made a fuss and **demanded** her youngest son be released to her as soon as possible, but hadn't expected it to be this soon.

She also wasn't expecting the crisply dressed Air Force officers mindfully watching the orderlies open the ambulance doors. Their faces grim and apprising every detail of the other men's work.

If it hadn't been raining so hard, she might have been more impressed by the situation. Her son being brought home to be nursed back to health by his loving mother in a private ambulance and under the escort of two Air Force officers. But, as fate would have it, the rain had been pelting down ever since the fire.

She'd gone to the hospital the night of the fire and been horrified. A place with it's patients on gurneys in hallways, the smells of urine and disinfectant, the smell of burn hair and flesh was everywhere and knew her son belonged home. She could care for him better than any hospital could. Stave off infection and Norman was barely 18. Too young to be away from home.

It was one thing for Dylan to join the Air Force at 18 and leave the nest. He was different from her youngest child. He'd always been bold and outgoing. Norman wasn't a soldier.

Norma looked behind her at the eager faces in the windows of the three story building. Her girls were excited to see the ambulance and the men in uniform. Not young men in uniform either, but **real** men. Wide shoulders with beautiful whips of gray in their short cropped hair and their bodies filled out with muscle. These officers escorting her son home were far away from the notions of silly, prideful young men. Perhaps that was what was so appealing to the girls.

"I have all his medications to help with the pain, Missus." the orderly was saying when they pulled the stretcher free from the ambulance.

An officer quickly stepped forward with his umbrella and shielded her son's face and body from the rain. A gentleman's courtesy that Norma nodded with gratitude at.

"I've his bed ready for him." she told the orderlies opening the door to her boarding house.

The twins were huddled together at the front desk where the girls collected their mail and where the bank of three phone booths were.

The officers looked curiously around the foyer, and she was quick to shutter the front parlor from the prying eyes of men. No doubt, they had never seen a ladies boarding house before and had noticed the eager, smiling faces looking down the flight of stairs at them.

"Dorothy? Helen?" Norma nodded to the twins who hadn't moved from their position at the front desk. Their dark eyes wide and staring and they'd taken on an almost frightened rabbit like appearance. "Will you go upstairs and check on the girls?"

She kept her voice kind and normal. Today was just another day.

Dorothy and Helen nodded and moved away from the officers and orderlies holding Norma's son up in the now cramped foyer.

"You have colored women working here?" one of the officers asked her. He hadn't even waited for the twins to finish climbing the stairs. Dorothy looking back at him scornfully as she followed her twin sister.

"Yes." Norma said smartly. Her irritation rising up at someone questioning who she hired and who she rented rooms to. "This is a large boarding house, and it takes a lot of work. Meals to be made, laundry and cleaning."

"They live here?" the officer asked skeptically and Norma turned the key to her apartment. The front hallway deceptively hiding it's owners main place of residence.

Unlike the foyer with its' dark wood on all sides, Norma Bates' apartment was awash in color. Yellows on her table cloth, jade green on her dishes, candy pink colored flowers on her table and rich green walpaper. It was alarming to see so much brightness in a place after being on the gloomy streets in the rain.

"In here." Norma said coldly to the orderlies. She was done with the Air Force officers. How dare they question her about who she hired. Leave it to the military though, they didn't care who they insulted.

She waved to the dining room which had long ago been redone as Dylan and Norman's bedroom. They sadly didn't have a door, but a secure curtain rod and thick, heavy curtains provided ample privacy for them. The boys had never complained about the shared room or lack of a door. Besides, when they lived in New York before Sam died, they had it much worse.

When Dylan had left home, Norma had been using his side of the bedroom as a much needed sewing space. Her red sewing machine gleaming brightly next to the pile of sheets and curtains she would have to hem that week. The washing, the mending, the cooking and the cleaning never ended here.

She noticed the two officers looking over her small apartment curiously. No doubt they were judging her for not only hiring and boarding negro women but for living in and running a perfectly respectable boarding house for women. It was a perfectly sound business. A needed business. Who were they to look down on her for it?

"Something wrong?" Norma snapped before she could stop herself.

The two orderlies has moved Norman towards his old room and the apartment, like the hallway was becoming cramped with the sudden influx of people.

"Sorry, ma'am." the other officer said. He'd been silent so far but just a judgmental. Norma could tell by the look on his face.

"We just weren't expecting… a boarding house." he said at last and gave her a polite smile that she saw right through.

"I run a very clean, very respectable business that helps single women maintain a residence and their dignity." Norma said feeling her anger rise up. "All of my girls are gainfully employed, God fearing, well mannered and we're not exactly used to having men here."

"We just weren't expecting the Colonel to… well, he didn't talk about a boarding house before." the rude officer had said.

"The Colonel?" Norma mimicked angry now that they were in her home looking at her things with displeasure. Then she remembered that horrible Colonel Romero who refused to see her again after she told him there'd been a mistake and her son Norman shouldn't be in the Air Force.  
"Why would Colonel Romero care if I run a boarding house? That's my business; just like flying planes is his business." she chastised the men before her.

"We have him in bed, Missus." one of the orderlies told her coming out of Norman's room. "He's still on pain medication, so he'll sleep for a while."

"You're right, ma'am." he polite officer said. "It's not our business. It was just a surprise is all. Colonel Romero is a private man."

Norma thought it was odd they were talking about Colonel. After all, she'd only met him a couple of times in the past two weeks. Not counting the incident in the hospital; which she hardly ever gave any thought to.

She nodded and they party understood that they were being excused. The four men, now seeming frightened of this house full of women, had to creep back out into the hallway where the twins had retuned to glare at them fleeing one by one. Norma Bates behind them to make sure they stayed gone.

There was a reason why she didn't allow anyone but maintenance men into this building. It caused too much of a disruption to have the male gender in this house.

Dorothy and Helen were back at their post at the front desk, they hardly every seemed far from the front desk, not even on laundry day which always demanded constant work. The matching cut of their dresses highlighting their being twins despite the different floral patterns. It didn't help they had the same face and mirrored hair styles. Few people could ever tell them apart and perhaps that was how the twins wanted it. Norma Bates could always tell them apart. She seemed to know everything that happened in her house. It was as if the walls whispered to her.

She knew Dorothy wore her hair part on the left and Helen on the right. That Helen had a beauty mark on her left cheek and was left handed, where Dorothy was right handed. She knew a little of their history, and could relate to it more than anyone knew, and she know enough to know the twins worked hard, were quite, clean, reliable and kept to themselves.

That was all Norma Bates needed to know. It wasn't anyone else's business whom she employed and she had a good mind to lock the second entryway doors to the foyer after they left. A thing she did almost as soon as the rude officer was out of her building.

"Are all the girls inside?" Norma asked one of the twins.

"Juliet, Nancy and Bernadette are still at work." Helen said helpfully while Dorothy looked just as annoyed as Norma felt. "Won't be back till after dinner. Longer hours at the new factory, you know."

"I want that door locked and don't open it for anyone else but one of our residents." Norma shuttered. She could still feel the irritating judgement and intrusion of the officers come to deliver her son home.

"Yes, Mrs. Bates." the twins chimed in unison. Norma knew they were watching her, probably the girls upstairs were watching her to. At any given time their were twenty-four girls in this cramped but efficient building. Each with their own small room, but the gossip would be ripe that Mrs. Bates had allowed all those men inside.

"I'll go check on Norman." she said at last. "Dorothy, you'll make sure dinner is ready?"

Dorothy was a sensible woman. She reminded Norma of a school teacher with how immovable her face could be. She could always be trusted, and liked the weight of responsibility.  
"Yes, Mrs. Bates." Dorothy said slowly.

Norma turned around was went back to her apartment. She was thankful to be home again. The windows to her tiny back garden was south facing so it let in a lot of sunlight. Even with all the rain, the apartment wasn't gloomy. It shone bright and vivid with riots of color.

She was glad she'd thought to stop by the little market and buy fresh fruit. Fresh fruit always looked so beautiful in the little jadeite bowl she had on her kitchen table. Norman would need fresh fruit. Lots of fruit if he was going to heal properly.

She quickly took down her brightly colored tea kettle. She'd boil some water, give Norman a good bed bath and wash his hair. Make sure the stink of the hospital was off him. The girls in this house were notorious about using all the hot water and it was always a fair bet that the taps would run cold after a few minutes.

So, as always, Norma Bates adapted and kept a few good tea kettles on her stove to warm up a bath with scalding hot water.

She was sure that her son would be feeling better in few days in her capable care.

"Norman?" she called out to the bedroom that was once designated for eating. It's wide archway looking very grand in her simple little apartment.

"Norman, what do you want for lunch? I can make you anything." she said in a musical voice.

There was no answer to her calls from the makeshift bedroom that her sons had been inhabiting for the past four years.

"Norman?" she called. "We're alone now. Just you and me."

She made sure the water was set to boil, pulled on a candy green apron and swiftly went to check on her son. The orderlies had laid him out on his old bed by the wall. A bed that was normally a day bed when made up.

"Norman?" she said brightly and saw the figure in her son's bed wasn't right. The figure didn't have her son's long, lanky body that seems to be all arms a legs. An oddity she was sure he would grow into once he'd gained enough weight.

This figure wasn't gangly tall like her son. Didn't have the nice brown hair and sweet face her son had. No, this man in her son's bed was older with dark, close cropped hair and two days worth of facial hair.

He was sleeping and she recognized him right away.

"Colonel Romero?" Norma questioned in shock.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

 **Bates Boarding Home for Unmarried Ladies**

 **Rules and Schedule**

1\. All residents will maintain respectful employment and or schooling at all times. Work and schooling schedules must be presented with application. Night hours will be accepted unless verified with a hospital or convalescence home.

2\. All residents must be female, unmarried, widowed, divorced and without attachments.

3\. At no time will a male visitor be allowed onto the second or third floor, or past the front office unless they are received during correct visiting hours.

4\. Visits from friends and family members (male or female) is permitted between the hours of 5:30 and 8 o'clock in the front parlor and foyer **only**. Failure to abide by this rule will be noted as cause for immediate eviction with no refund of pre-paid rent.

5\. At no time will a resident of this establishment sit on or pass time on the front steps of this house. There is a nearby park to enjoy the good weather.

6\. Residents of this house shall always be dressed when attending breakfast, dinner, picking up mail, making telephone calls and entertaining guests in the front parlor. No one shall be permitted downstairs unless they are dressed.

7\. Smoking is not permitted in this house

8\. Drinking is not permitted in this house

9\. Loudness and vulgarity is not permitted in this house

10\. All residents will attend some form of religious service every sabbath. We will be happy to direct you to the proper church or synagogue

11\. The pay phone at the front office are for residents and guest use only between the hours of 9am and 8pm. No incoming calls will be taken from the pay phones. Ask friends and family to call the front desk and leave a message.

12\. 8 o'clock is officially quite time. No music, typing on typewriters or loudness will be permitted.

13\. All residents must attend breakfast and morning prayers every morning and be present for a headcount. If you are absent for that morning's headcount, this will be noted as cause for your eviction with no refund of pre-paid rent money.

14\. No resident is permitted to stay overnight at another location unless permission has been obtained in writing from Mrs. Bates with the name of the people hosting you and a location and number you can be reached at. Failure to follow this rule will be cause for your eviction with no refund of pre-paid rent money.

15\. All residents must sign in and out in the big book at the front desk with date and time and if you are going to work, church, school or to socialize with friends.

16\. All residents must be inside by 8 o'clock unless other arrangements with friends or families have been made and permission from Mrs. Bates has been granted.

17\. All residents will used their assigned washrooms and water closets without exception.

18\. All residents will be provided breakfast and dinner in addition to a clean room and bathroom.

19\. All residents will strip their own bedding every Saturday night and apply fresh bedding themselves.

20\. All residents must pay their rent on the 1st of each month. Rent envelopes are available at the front desk and will be deposited in the ' _letter_ ' box along with complaints and suggestions.

21\. If any resident of this house should find herself in consorting with criminals, have behaved immorally, acted improperly in public or is disrespectful to the owner or staff members of this house, this will be noted as cause for immediate eviction with no refund of pre-paid rent money.

 **6 am- first wake up call.**

 **6:30 am- second wake up call**

 **7 am- final wake up call**

 **7:30 - prayers, headcount, breakfast**

 **5:30 pm visiting hours in front parlor open**

 **6:30 pm evening prayers and headcount, dinner in dinning room**

 **8 pm evening's first call to bed**

 **8:30 pm quite hours**

 **9:30 pm lights out**

Emma Decody looked sadly at Mrs. Bates grand list of demands and schedule and decided she wasn't nearly rebellious enough to go against any of them. They had been typed out carefully and put into dime store frames on the wall. The only decoration in the small bedroom that would be hers.

The Bates Boarding House for Unmarried Ladies was far cleaner and better run than any other place she'd looked at. Despite it's strictness, Emma thought the rules were in place more for their protection than to keep the over two dozen young women in line.

She'd been offered, and accepted a job in the telegraph department for the war office. Her small scholarship to a decent secretarial school finally paying off and she might just be able to make a living on her own. An exciting prospect for a girl who'd never had anything of her own of any value.

"Well?" the lady from the front desk asked. Her voice trying to be kind, but she was clearly busy and had no time to entertain a new resident.

"Bathroom?" Emma asked awkwardly. The colored woman in a dark blue dress nodded her head down the hall.

"Mrs. Bates keeps separate rooms for toilets and bathtubs. She feels it's less likely you'll spread germs this way. You have your own small sink in your room. As you can see. A lot of our girls wash their intimates in the sink here to keep them nice, but we offer laundry service here for an extra fee."

"How much?" Emma asked.

The woman looked a little annoyed that there would be extra washing from this new tenant. She could only imagine how much laundry there was in a big house like this full of women.

"A dollar." the woman said. "Otherwise it's the new laundry mat they built down the block.

Emma nodded. She didn't have that much in the way of clothing and she would take her chances with the new laundry mat and the sink. The woman shrugged as if she expected as much.

"You'll provide your own towels, washcloths and bath robe. Mrs. Bates likes for her girls to wear robes even though men aren't allowed up here. If you don't have a robe, I suggest you get one."

Emma nodded. She didn't have a robe.  
"It's important that you show up for the morning prayers and the headcount at breakfast." the woman went on. Her voice sounding bored and monotoned after so long of repeating these same rules. "You don't have to eat or even pray if you don't want to. Most don't. We just have to make sure you're still alive and safe. Mrs. Bates is paranoid about what could happen to a young woman going to and coming home from work. It's why you'll need to sign in and out of the big book. So if something happens to you, we can at least give the police an idea of where you were at."

Emma nodded. She'd never been in such a large city before and the rules were making more sense. Was it even safe to leave the boarding house?

The woman looked at her critically.

"You have a job? Mrs. Bates wants her girls to have a job or go to school. No staying around the house unless your sick or it's your day off." she asked. "Gives the wrong impression when a girl doesn't have a steady job."

Emma nodded eagerly.

"I'm- yes- the war office." she said "I'm-"

The woman held her hand up to stop her.

"Another unwritten rule." she advised. "Mrs. Bates hates talking about the war. Hates those bombing happening in London and talking about Hitler. She doesn't like all the service men around the city and she had a lot to say about it with her oldest son joining up."

Emma nodded. A lot of people didn't like to talk about the inevitable war that was looming over them. It might be another year or just a few weeks. Who knew?

"Well, you'll fill out your information sheet on the desk there, put your rent money in cash in the letter box in Mrs. Bates door." the woman told her. "My sister Helen and I live here to. The downstairs rooms by the kitchen. We do most of the cooking and cleaning."

"You live here?" Emma asked without thinking. She had been surprised to see so many men and women here in California who weren't white. Ethnicities she didn't know the names of and who's accents and languages sounded strange and exotic.

The woman nodded. She hadn't seemed offended.

"Well, I mean is it… a nice place to live?" she asked trying not to sound rude.

The woman shrugged and nodded.

"Gets a little loud before quite hours. You just keep to the rules and it's always been a good place." she said before disappearing.

~ Emma opened her wicker work purse, a graduation gift from her fellow classmates at the secretary school, and fished out a pencil. She'd learned in school to never write with pen because everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes could be forgiven and easily erased like they'd never happened. Only fools wrote with a pen. Only fools believed they couldn't make mistakes.

The owner of the boarding house, Mrs. Bates, wanted a lot of information from her residents. She wanted to know their original home address and her parents names and if they were living or not. She also wanted to know her next of kin and who would be responsible for her if she became sick or needed help.

Emma had to pause over this section. Her father had died three years ago when she was just fifteen. She'd spent the rest of her time in an orphanage in Oregon. A grim place that was over crowded and she was expected to help care for the younger ones.

Her mother had vanished when she was five and only sent a few postcards from California over the years. No return address and they always depicted her wayward mother as having a wonderful time without her.

Then, a miracle happened. She's won an ordinary spelling competition and then another and then another. After a year of winning, she'd been a finalist at the national spelling bee and taken train rides and sightseeing tours that were all paid for. She even got new clothes for her appearances thanks to local sponsors.

She'd come if second but it was a huge victory for her. She'd received a medal, just like in the Olympics, cash prize money and most importantly, a full scholarship to Inman's secretarial college.

Emma didn't wait to finish high school. She didn't want to stay in the horrible, overcrowded, smelly orphanage just to be awarded a diploma. She used her cash prize to buy a train ticket, book a ladies dorm room that was packed full of young girls like herself and went to work learning a trade.

It hadn't been easy. It was like learning a new language. All the typing was one thing, but the short hand, sonography and morse code was something else. On top of it all, she was charged three dollars a month for a single bed in an already over sold dormitory. One large room full of beds that resembled Scarlet O'Hera's turn at being a nurse in 'Gone with the Wind'.

The girls were all loud and ill mannered. Most of them had come from farms to work in factories and hopefully find a husband. Everything had become community property in that large room. The bathrooms were less than private and the noise never stopped.

But the girls there were good natured and helpful. Also the girls at her secretarial school, more demure and educated ladies were pleasant enough to be around. Emma could feel that the experience was changing her from the inside out. That her brain and her body was changing and she was becoming a whole different person each day that passed.

She started styling her hair different and wearing heels like a grown woman. She checked out library books on proper manners because she hated the idea of being an ill mannered young woman.

She'd learned how to put on make up and dress properly, how to fashion clothes that might have only been suitable for the quilting bin. All things her mother should have taught her, but had failed to because she had run away to live a happier life.

After seven months of intensive training and personal growth, Emma was properly prepared for the world, an adult and free.

Emma wrote 'City of San Fransisco' as her responsible party and that both her parents were dead. If Mrs. Bates had a problem with that, she couldn't hold it against her. Lots of people had no relatives. It didn't make them bad.

She went down the three flights of stairs, careful not to kick or scuff her shoes, to the office where she saw the same woman who had shown her around wearing a different colored dress.

 _'_ _Wait, was that the same woman?'_ Emma thought nervously. The woman behind the desk smiled much more warmly at her and pointed to the letter box built into a door.

"You drop your rent money and other information there, honey." the lady said sweetly. She wore a bright yellow where her other self had worn dark blue and didn't smile.

"I'm a twin." the woman said when Emma stared at her curiously. "You met my sister Dorothy. I'm Helen."

Helen smiled as if this were a funny joke. Emma had never seen a twin before. Not a grown ones who looked so much alike and yet so different from each other.

"Oh." she said and slid her rent money for the month, ten dollars, into the letter box along with her application.

"You make sure you're here for headcount." Helen advised and nodded for Emma to go back upstairs.

Emma quickly sprinted up the stairs to her new third floor bedroom. She'd never had a bedroom all to herself before. Even when her father was alive she'd slept in an alcove that wasn't a real bedroom. But for ten dollars a month, she finally had a real bedroom. A real bedroom with her own sink, mirror, bed, small desk with a chair, a dresser and night table with a lamp on it.

The transom window above the door was big enough to allow good ventilation and light to come in through the big window in the hallway. Plus she had her bedside light to read by. She could even buy a desk lamp and typewriter in a few months if she saved. If this place was a good place to live, she could live here forever.

She unfastened her sad little sky-blue suitcase that had once been very elegant before it was donated to the second hand shop. In it, Emma had her only possessions in the world. Her four dresses for work. Each bought second hand and artfully modified by the rough farm girls she lodged with while in school. They may have been loud and had poor table manners, but they could sew with fierce conviction.

Her second pair of shoes she called her 'second best'. They were scuffed and worn but you never referred to your things as scuffed and worn. You called them your second best. Just like you never said the word 'cheap' but you said 'inexpensive' or 'cost effective'. You never admitted you were poor, you only admitted you were 'frugal' or that something wasn't 'in the budget' and you never spent money to impress people. Only to keep yourself comfortable and spiritually fulfilled. Because your own opinion was all that mattered.

Emma hadn't learned these lessons in school. She'd found them in the library books on ladies decorum from the turn of the century. It had been fascinating reading and offered practical advice for young women in society.

Emma didn't want to be poor or think of herself as poor anymore. She studied these lessons just as eagerly as she studied her short hand and Morse code.

She learned the proper way to brush down her clothing at night and to invest in simple jewelry that doesn't detract from a ladies natural beauty. Not that Emma had any jewelry to detract with, but when she did, she would make sure it was simple and beautiful.

She decided she would wear her violet sweater over her night dress until she could find a decent robe. Her fair to San Fransisco was more than expected and her expenses here at the Bates Boarding House for Young Ladies was more that she bargained for to. But at least she had a place to stay for a month and she didn't have to worry about meals.

She hung her four remodeled dressed on the two hooks behind her door to shake the wrinkles out, and neatly stashed away her meager assortment of undergarments in the dresser.

Her personal possessions, first to be packed and last to be unpacked, were at the bottom of the suitcase. Her father's-father's bible; wrapped up lovingly in one of his best shirts. An old photograph album with odd looking people in them whom she was related to but didn't recognize. Her diaries scrawled out in ordinary composition books. An 'inexpensive' choice and 'just as effective' Emma had repeatedly told herself. She'd kept her diaries since before her father died and hidden them away from others who thought they were nothing more than school work. Her small handwriting making each page stretch longer and lasting more than if she wrote in big lettering. Finally, there were her personal letters and cards. All the little birthday cards and notes she'd received over the years and letters she wanted to keep. These included her mother's thoughtless, bragging postcards with faded pictures of the beach on the front.

Emma's personal correspondence made a small pile that was tide up with a lavender hair ribbon. Each card and letter neatly kept in it's respective envelope and put order by its post mark. The last card she'd received was in congratulations for finishing secretary school and was signed by her fellow classmates. There was also her father's obituary in the pile, along with a few of the well meaning sympathy cards she'd received when he died.

But, it was best not to think of that.

She'd kept a scrapbook of all the newspaper clippings she'd been in while on her grand tour as a spelling champion. All her little certificates and articles were neatly placed in the handsome scrapbook along with snapshots of cities she'd been to and paper souvenirs she'd thought to snag from hotel rooms along the way. It had been a fun time and she didn't think it was bragging to keep such a thing.

Her spelling bee medal was safely stashed in her home made christmas stocking from when she was a girl along with her extra cash. They would stay in the suitcase.

Emma unwrapped her secretarial degree from her the safety of her sweater and placed it on the empty desk. She'd framed it of course, because she was proud of her achievement. Evermore so than her spelling bee wins. Proud that she could now go out and earn her own money. Pay her own rent. Buy her own clothes.

She sat on the edge of her bed with nothing else to unpack and yet the room still seemed woefully empty. Devoid of personality and she wasn't sure how to fill it. How to fill this sadness that was an empty bedroom and an empty life.

 **I know I keep promising to finish TSCB (remake) but I get distracted. I can't give you a good time when I'll pick it back up again.**


	3. Chapter 3

3.

~ Norma Bates didn't have the same worries as many of her young residents. Their worries were simple in comparison to hers at times. She often wished she could live as carelessly as the girls upstairs. Young women who only cared about clothes, make-up, dates and music. She didn't ever remember being as free as them. She always had mountains of responsibility. Never enough time to go to dances or lose hours of the day with idle gossip with friends.

Just now, her little apartment was a world away from the lives of Emma and the other girls. Norma looked nervously at her new, and most unwelcome resident, sleeping and seeming to dream restlessly.

News of the fire was still making the papers and whispers of arson were clear. A federal offense if they were true since so many had died and it had happened on a military base.

Days later and that awful hospital, with its' stink of urine, clinging to her hair and disinfectant could still be felt in her clothes. No matter how much she aired out her red jacket, she could still smell the memory of that place in her skin.

She'd thrown open the windows and let fresh air flush out her apartment but the stink of the hospital was overpowering now. All the more reason to get Norman home. He was liable to get an infection at that awful place. Septicemia was serious enough that her son could die from it's ravages.

She needed to get Norman home because once under her constant care, her good foods, and cleanliness, Norman would be better in no time.

She blamed Hitler for all this. For creating a world where young men wanted to dress up in a uniform and rush off to war. Her own brother, Caleb had joined up to fight in Europe when he was Norman's age, and he'd never come home. Perhaps that was for the best though. As rough and violent as her brother could be, a war was inevitable for someone like him.

Her brother had sent home half illegible letters trying to describe the front lines. Letters that had come all the way from Europe with exotic stamps and impotent descriptions of the alien world there. They were written by a man who wasn't much of a reader, let alone a writer. Caleb's main concerns had always been the weather, machinery, food and boxing matches. None of the civility of Europe impressed him.

So he was reduced to telling his sister that it rained too much, that it was very cold, that the food was awful, the machinery was very loud, officers got better treatment and that wasn't fair, the trenches smelled very bad, he missed home, her cooking, a clean warm bed and he wanted to come home. In short, her brother deeply regretted joining the army.

Then nothing came at all for months. Finally a telegram arrived for Norma saying he'd been missing, and presumed killed in action. His personal effects sent home, not to his parents but to his sister Norma as he'd said she was his only fmaily.

Caleb was simple and hadn't realized how tragic a war really was. How cheap human life was and for a simple farm boy like himself, his life was cheaper than most. All Norma had of her brother was a few old pictures of him in uniform, a bible that the army issued him and that he wasn't able to really read, and a medal for bravery. He'd saved school children from enemy fire and was awarded the Bronze Star a few weeks before he stopped writing.

Still, a piece of medal and other totems she kept locked in an old cedar chest, didn't replace a brother. War was terrible and yet, young men would always run towards it. They would always run to their death thinking they couldn't die.

She'd tried to convince Dylan and Norman of this. Told them how their uncle had died in the Great War. How their uncle had throw away his life so foolishly for reasons he didn't really understand. She'd shown them the Bronze star and the sloppily written letters which had faded with age; Caleb fading away with now to.

She told her sons how her grandfather had served in the Army as well to fight for the Union. He hadn't done so under any loyalty to his country. He'd joined up because he was the middle son of eight children and had nothing. Her grandfather had survived a few years of marching through the South only to march through the West to tame the great expansion. He'd died a wealthy man, but with a surplus of children to liquidate his wealth into nothing.

How her husband Sam Bates had been a good soldier and gotten shot in the back for his troubles in Belgium just 22 years ago. How that wound had never healed right and he'd been an insurance salesman ever since.

Insurance was something Sam Bates was good at. Although preying on the fears of helpless women was easy for a man like Sam Bates. He sold them insurance for everything you could think of. Babies born dead, husbands abandoning wives and families, loss of limbs and thumbs, loss of property from fire or theft.

Even when the depression hit and people cashed in their life insurance polices just to survive, Sam Bates still made money. At least enough to keep his family in a small, basement apartment with heat and food. It was better than most of their friends and family. The boys never had to be farmed out and Sam wasn't terribly hard to live with.

Norma knew he spent most of his nights with a lady friend. In fact, he hadn't been home for more than a year, but he still paid the rent on time and the gas and power. Norma had a small, thankless job at Macy's department store working as a seamstress and they got by. Norma didn't understand why she hadn't divorced him. Why she didn't just walk away. She had no money, two boys who needed her and no real skills. So, it was easier to just stay where she was. Just stay miserable.

Then, on a snowy night in 1935, Sam Bates was killed by a car that had jumped the curb. He'd been killed instantly outside of an all night eatery.

Norma, now a widow, hadn't even cried when she heard the news. Hadn't even been terribly shocked or upset that Sam was just gone. Vanished like Caleb had been with the body neatly taken away. Like he'd never existed at all.

Norma hadn't expected much when Sam passed. She supposed she could better work if she moved. If she pulled Dylan out of High School and maybe Norman to.

That was a hard thing to think about. Dylan would have been the first one in their family to have finished High School. Then, unexpectedly, a knock on the door of their dark, dingy basement apartment they could no longer afford. One of Sam's fellow agents had come to change their lives. To tell them that Sam had an insurance policy on himself with more than Norma had ever dreamed possible.

She immediately packed her and the boys on the next train to California and as far away from the cruel New York as she could get.

California was better than she ever expected. The sun was always out and wild things seemed to grow everywhere. Fruit was available in every shop and there was always plenty to eat, see and do.

The weather was always warm and Norma could feel that horrible cloud of unhappiness melt away. An unhappiness that had been aging her prematurely while she was married to Sam was vanishing with each day. She had noticed her skin improved with all the good food she and the boys were eating, her hair shone brighter from the sunlight and she actually felt younger. When had that happened? When had the clock suddenly reversed for Norma Bates and she started growing younger? Her body becoming stronger and less hunched over now that she was able to walk in the fresh air and sunshine everyday. She soon hardly recognized herself in the mirror now and wondered what had happened to that withered middle aged housewife who was sad all the time and existed only in the gloom. She'd been replaced by this young woman who seemed like a fearless warrior. Who smiled all the time and who didn't want to be in the shadows anymore.

She settled on San Fransisco over the other Californian cities because she loved to ride the trollies. The way they climbed the seemingly endless and massive hills and then rolled downward; were just like a rollercoaster. It was like she was flying, the way her stomach would turn with excitement and her skirt would flare out with the wind.

The boarding house for young ladies had been built as a boarding house for men. It had been packed to the rafters with men working on the railroads, in factories or apart of the ship yard. It was a decent looking building and it was for sale, owner's apartment and all.

Norma decided the men would have to go. Nothing against the sex in general, but she saw very few boarding homes for women in this ever expanding boom town. A place that would hire women just as easily as they would hire men. These women would need a safe, clean, comfortable place to live and Norma could charge a fair amount to give them that. She would charge more than twice what the original male tenants were paying but her ladies wouldn't have to share rooms and meals would be provided.

Norma knew all too well how vulnerable women could be to a young man offering a free meal. So she would provide privacy, meals, safety, respectability and cleanliness. That was worth the ten dollars a month she was planning to charge each girl. A fortune in her own mind.

The building needed improvements though; no arguments there. Norma added a separate room just for toilets and dived them into stalls like she'd seen in New York. She didn't like the idea of a production of washing bodies to coincide with someone else eliminating bodily waste. So, everything was cleaner and much more efficient to separate those two needs.

She was forward thinking with her plans for the boarding house remodel. Adding three wooden payphone booths for her girls across from the front desk and imposing strict rules for how her residents should behave.

She lived in fear of her girls siting on the front steps to her house showing off guarders and exposed flesh to people. That would only gain the reputation of a house of prostitution. So, she outlawed it and forbid any visitors past the first floor and restricted visitation to the front parlor during selected hours.

She worried about the cost of the renovations. In addition to buying the building, she hadn't exactly been thrifty when it came to outfitting her new life. It was all well and good to charge a king's ransom in rent and she was quickly flooded with applications, but money would trickle back slowly into her bank account.

The apartment she now shared with the boys was a far cry from the bleakness of New York, but it needed attention as well. It had once been all white. Always a mistake because it clearly showed layers of dirt from cooking with grease. She'd spent a solid month painting and selecting nice furniture to outfit her apartment, as well as the bedrooms for her girls.

She finally completed the renovations just in time for a siege of young women to come and live with her. Their parents eager to have their daughters stay at the Bates Boarding House because of Norma Bates' rules.

She'd honestly believed that running a boarding house which served two meals a day and did laundry once a week would be easy, but it was anything but. At full capacity, this house could hold twenty-four girls. That was a lot of noise in the morning and evenings, laundry, cleaning, cooking and things to keep its' owner occupied with. Even with the help of her two sons who proved they didn't have the knack for this kind of work.

Norma had needed help, and it came in the form of the twins, Dorothy and Helen. What Norma knew about the twins was that when they had come to California, they were very young. Their parents had to steal away on a train without telling anyone, even family, they were leaving or where they were going.

Although slavery was over, the deep south was still a difficult place for the poor to get ahead. So the twin's family had taken the church donations they had been offered, bought rail tickets through a white friend, and left without telling their employer (a farmer) they were leaving.

It had never occurred to Norma that leaving a job would be so difficult for someone of color in the South. Apparently these things had to be done in secret and without saying goodbye, and never making contact with your old life again.

When the twins and their parents arrived in California, they sent a postcard to the church with their last name only. No return address and no more information. There was always the fear they might be found and taken back. Like wayward cattle who'd wandered out of their pens. Although such a thing would be illegal, those were laws that applied to rich white people and not to the poor colored.

Work was plentiful for pickers and the family did well. Well enough to send money to the church that had helped them leave and start a new life. The twins admitted it took their father two years to pay back the train tickets. Sending a dollar when he could spare it with no return address and no way to know if it got there.

Dorothy and Helen had become maids before they were thirteen and worked in hotels. They cooked, did laundry but only on the condition they stay together.

The twins, now in their late forties, had married and become widows themselves. Their children married off and no longer needing them. So, it had been a Godsend to have the twins come into Norma Bates' life and she was more than happy to keep them both together and even set them up in a good size room on the ground floor.

The twins seemed far more capable than Norma could ever be when it came to running things behind the scenes. They would wash clothes in the back garden and hang them to dry. Then they would start dinner or clean upstairs on down. They went to the market and never over spent.

They were a gift, the equal of Sam's life insurance money in giving Norma Bates a new life. They looked after Norma and her sons. Dorothy with her sensible dedication and Helen with her kindness and bright smiles. So it had always upset Norma when she would interview potential residents and the girl in question would refuse to rent a room because of the twins living there. Even if they were hired help or hardly seen at all. It was enough of an insult that two women of color were working behind a front desk or appearing to run things.

Norma took it in stride and moved onto the next applicant. Her rooms were never empty long and the twins would stay with her forever if she could help it. There were plenty of nice young ladies who didn't care about the twins. Who only wanted a safe place to live and work a decent job. She kept her rates reasonable to. Most women were making $0.30 an hour and even if they worked overtime, $10 a month was a stretch for most of them.

A lot of these girls had to send money home to their parents to help with siblings or they had to go to school and it was hard to work a full time job.

Money would always be a little tight, but her boarding house was thriving.

The only real exception was her two sons. She made them use the backdoor to the apartment, which they seemed fine with. She didn't want them to come through the front hall and for her girls to influence them. Norman seemed especially enchanted by the flood of women around him. He looked at them like exotic birds who'd settled all about him with beautiful feathers and strong cries he didn't understand.

Dylan seemed more curious and later annoyed by them.

She kept them safely segregated from her girls at all times and most of the tenants didn't know she had sons. Mrs. Bates not seeming like a 'Mrs' at all. She looked far too young to have been married; much less with older sons almost grown.

Then, just like that, they were grown. Dylan had no sooner graduated High School and his mother had put the diploma in a frame on the wall, than he told her he'd joined the Air Force. Norma had told him that wasn't a funny joke and he assured her he wasn't joking. There had been a hellish fight that ensued, but a few weeks later, Dylan had completed bootcamp and that was the first time Norma Bates had met Colonel Alex Romero.

She hadn't thought much of the Colonel then. He looked like every other man in uniform there to her untrained eyes. He'd shaken her hand when Dylan introduced them and Norma had caught him staring at her. Her eyes catching his eyes looking her over as she smoothed down Dylan's uniform. She hadn't minded; in fact, she'd gotten used to it. Men were suddenly staring at her these days as though they appreciated her.

She'd bought a bright red coat that was suitable for the California weather and it seemed to make her shine brightly with all the green of the trees and flowers around her.

"You're Bates'… mother?" Romero had questioned as if it had been a lie.

Dylan had taken his brother to meet some of his fellow airmen. Her oldest son looking handsome in his uniform and she noticed how all the girls were looking at him with little smiles and wide eyes.

She hadn't liked Romero's tone. A thinly veiled accusation that she wasn't telling the truth about her own son.

"Obviously." she said coldly and made sure the pin Norman and Dylan had given her that morning was noticeable.

It was a 'sweetheart jewelry' brooch. One with ' _Mother_ ' in gilt script over a Mother of Pearl set of spread angle wings and the Air Force insignia dangling like a pendant below. She knew it had cost her boys a pretty penny and she'd been just as proud to wear it as any military medal.

"Sorry, you just don't look… I would have thought you were his older sister." Romero said stiffly. The two of them were becoming uncomfortable and Norma quickly walked away.

She hadn't noticed Romero then except that he seemed an intimidating figure. She didn't like scary men and had enough of them to last a lifetime. Dylan seemed to like him, but that didn't concern her.

Then, after Norman had so recklessly followed in his brother's footsteps and joined up, Norma had gone to see the Colonel who sat behind his desk and so imperiously told him that Norman Bates was eighteen years old, a man, and volunteered and wasn't going anywhere. That was when she'd really noticed him. Noticed the coldness in him that she didn't like. The hostility that must serve him well in war, but not in appeasing upset mothers of eighteen year old boys.

Now she looked worriedly at the wounded Colonel. Hardly the fearsome creature he'd been before. What kind of preposterous mistake had there been? Why would he ever be brought here? Did he still think this was a boarding house for men? That was surely the only explanation.

Except, those rude officers had known it was boarding house for women only.

So why leave him here? Where was Norman?

Norma didn't keep a phone in her apartment. Its' shrill ringing was always upsetting and she refused to have it in her home. So, she grabbed her coin purse, made sure the Colonel was still asleep and went to the bank of wooden phone booths in the front foyer. She'd call the hospital, tell them of the dreadful mistake and then they would collect the Colonel and bring Norman home.

~ The phone booths she'd installed with the help of the phone company were mercifully private. Each girl was able to cloister herself inside the narrow closet like booth and shut the door. No one would hear her conversation from the outside and Ma Bell charged just ten cents a local.

Norma Bates wasn't a fan of phone calls. The phone company would drop calls and keep dimes and it wasn't terribly convenient for her. The post office was far more reliable and she could write a lengthy letter for much cheaper.

But she didn't have time for that, or to go to the hospital. Who knows how long the Colonel would sleep.

She asked the operator to connect her to the hospital, fed the dime into the phone as requested, shuttered the door and when a musical, female voice picked up, she quickly demanded to speak to someone in admissions.

The girl seemed startled, but asked how she could help.  
"My son, Norman Bates, was supposed to be brought home today." Norma snapped. "Room 218. He was in the fire at the base. Instead your ambulance brought home Colonel Alex Romero."

"Oh yes!" the woman on the other end said happily. "Doctor White signed that order himself. How is your husband doing, Mrs. Romero? Do you need to speak to the doctor on call?"

"What?" Norma gasped in horror.

"The Colonel just had a mild break that required some pins. He's already in a walking cast and the doctor was glad to see his wife had come to take care of him after the fire." the woman said.

"His **wife**?" Norma asked trying to remember if another woman had come to see the Colonel in all the confusion. She'd never suspected the Colonel of being married. Who would want to marry such an unfeeling man?

"Yes." the woman said. "I saw you myself. That night. You wanted your husband put into a private room. You helped me redress him. You spoke to Doctor White about his condition and everything. He charted that we could send the Colonel home with you today. We left a message with a woman named Helen."

Norma looked at Helen who was at the front desk. No doubt the poor woman had thought they meant Norman when they said an ambulance would be by that day.

"No." Norma groaned. "My son."

"Your son, Norman Bates." the woman said. "Is still not ready to go home."

Her voice was annoying and light.

"We can call you as soon as Norman is ready to be moved home. Until then, give our best to your husband and let us know if you need anything." she said sweetly and hung up.

The sound of the pay phone swallowing up Norma's dime made her clinch the phone cord harder.


	4. Chapter 4

**I want to preface this chapter by reminding everyone that it's set in the 1940's. The world and attitudes about EVERYTHING was very different. Women really did define their identity by their relationship status and it wasn't right then and it's not right now. Girls were encouraged to only be concerned about getting married and if they weren't married by a certain age, they were a failure. Their financial futures depended on finding a husband and having a home.**

 **I think also, in the era of #metoo it's very important to know that men are perfectly capable of being sexually abused even if it's done by women. It's an issue that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but I'm sure it happened and is still happening and most young men don't understand they were being used and manipulated.**

 **This chapter isn't intended to throw shade at women because I consider myself a feminist, but also a realist. The world was a very different place back then and it wouldn't be far to whitewash it or pretend like these things didn't happen and these attitudes didn't exist.**

4.

~ Dylan was put on a plane when news of the fire broke. As was normal for the military, he was simply told he had to leave Pearl; and go home on emergency family leave.

"Seems your brother and step-father were both injured, Airman." his Sergeant said just he was about to leave the barracks for morning training.

Dylan had looked at the Sergeant curiously. His brother wasn't in the Air Force and his mother hadn't remarried. She had no intentions of ever remarrying. Her business kept her far too occupied to entertain men and she never spoke about any male friends.

"There has to be a mistake." Dylan said slowly.

"No mistake, Bates." the sergeant snapped. Then his voice was suddenly gentle as if the young man was in shock at the news.

"I was told your step-father's injures weren't serious, but Colonel Romero will need rest. He's being shipped back home to your mother tomorrow and your brother is doing well enough after surgery. He's still in the hospital but recovering. A young man like that, their bodies just bounce back. I don't want you to worry. It's in Gods hands and we have to believe he's in control." the Sergeant told him.

Norma hadn't raised her sons to be in any way religious but going into the military had exposed Dylan to all shades on this spectrum. He'd learned one thing right away, when the holy rollers got to rolling, it was best to get out of their way.

Dylan nodded, thanked him for the plane ticket and the two weeks leave and packed his bags.

He'd written postcards to his mother and to Norman all about Hawaii and the base he was stationed at. Pearl Harbor was nothing more that an air strip just now but occasionally a few battle ships floated lazily by. It was an idyllic place to train. Perfect weather and clear blue skies. The teachers were nearly deserted most days and he could even learn surfing on his down time. A place like this, war would never come.

Dylan would fly a plane in the mornings, take a long lunch, fly again in the evenings. Mostly taking people back and forth from the island. The base was always electric with young people who were experiencing the world for the first time. Pretty nurses at the clinic seemed to never end and on the evenings he was off, they were always at the local hot spots. Always ready for drinking and dancing.

They were exactly the kind of girls his mother wouldn't have approved of. They were young, pretty and rowdy. Far too loud and ready to have a good time. Maybe that's why Dylan had been so drawn to them. A different girl every night till their faces started to blur together and he didn't bother with names. He's started drinking too much, during those late night parties, and perhaps some time away wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

As much as he loved his freedom, he missed his mother and his brother. As strict and downright crazy as she could be sometimes, he missed having her worry over him. Here, no one cared about him at all. Not really. Not in the way he wanted them to care.

Although he didn't care to go back to the boarding house. Too many bad memories there.

~ It had shocked both Dylan and Norman when their mother had suddenly bought the large building and began the re-model. The place smelled of the rank workmen that had so recently inhabited it. To her credit though, Norma Bates had wasted no time in refurbishing it from the cellar to the attic. She'd wanted it to be a habitat for the female of their species only.

She hired professionals to come in and tear down walls just to build them back up again. New bath tubs were put in and toilets. The outside of the house was painted a cheerful buttercup yellow with royal navy trim and Norma had box planters with flowers on the outside windows just to dispel the notion that this was a masculine house.

The whole process had been violent and demanding, but it had been done in less than six months. Norman and Dylan were tucked in their beds that first night with over a dozen women already moved into the Bates Boarding House. Their movements upstairs invoking curiosity from the young men as they heard water running in pipes and floorboards squeak and groan under the weight of bodies they couldn't see, feel or know about; but were just on top of them.

It wasn't at all like the other places they had lived in. They knew nothing about their neighbors before and they were surrounded by families. Here, they were the loan males in a frightening new world of women.

"I wonder what they're doing up there." Norman whispered that first night. Both young men were listening with fascination to the sounds of light footsteps and the musical laughter that carried though an open window.

"Just… getting ready for bed." Dylan said feeling slightly uncomfortable and wishing he had his own room. He'd never had his own room before and was thankful their mother had allowed them to have separate camp beds a few years ago. He'd been tried of sharing a bed with his brother.

"What do you think they wear to bed?" Norman asked innocently. "You think they dress for bed like in the films? I saw this one film with Rita Hayworth and she was wearing this thing that you could see right through. She had a night dress on under it, but why buy a robe you can see through?"

"Damn it, Norman, I don't know." Dylan said feeling an uncomfortable tightness growing under the covers. He'd ben frightened of these new sensations that seemed to spring to life the past few years. Urges that had changed him and made him irritable and a traitor to his own body. He was annoyed he had to share a room with his brother. Annoyed his mother had pushed them in the old dining room of the apartment and felt a curtain would do for a door.

He wanted his own room. Why couldn't he have his own room? His mother kept one open as an emergency bedroom for any family member stranded in the city overnight. For a fee they could stay, if they were female. All their mothers rules were strictly aimed at women and that left Dylan and Norman in a type of netherworld. A place they defiantly didn't belong, but they were helpless to leave.

All too soon, however, Dylan grew tired of the sounds these women made. Most of them weren't as young and vibrant as he was hoping for. They were older, like the twins or his own mother. Women who had lost a husband through death, abandonment or divorce. Who's children were on their own and never wrote to them. Some had never had a husband and were spinsters at thirty. Women who still worked and saved their sad little money for when they would be too old to work at all. Women who didn't make much noise except to play piano in the front parlor in the evenings.

Then, as if an answer to his prayers, people started to worry about someone named Hitler. A man in Europe who's politics Dylan knew nothing about, but had made San Fransisco burst to life with new energy.

Suddenly there were young people everywhere. Young men in uniforms that looked dashing. All of them with a beautiful girl on their arm. His mother raised her rates a little and rented out her rooms at record speed to young women who were loud and ran through the upstairs halls laughing.

Girls who called out to him when they spotted him coming home through the back garden. Girls who kissed him for bringing them oranges or strawberries. Girls who wanted him to sneak up to their rooms at night and visit them. That no one would need to know, they promised never to tell his mother.

He gave into this temptation. It was too good to be true. Girls always wanting him to be their little secret. Their little tryst. Girls who were always a little older and more experienced than him were more than happy to educate him if he could keep his mouth shut.

A different girl pulling at him every night, gleefully asking him to sneak away till he felt sick of the sight of them. Tired of stocking and under things drying over a home made clothes line by their dirty sink. Tired of their unmade beds and bedrooms that were littered with oddities he couldn't identify and hundreds of copies of _'Photoplay_ ' . All of them had some random handsome movie star tacked to the walls.

The sex wasn't even that good. The girls always wanting him to feel something for them and he always felt nothing. They thought they were seducing him with their childish voices and hapless giggles when it was really off-putting and did nothing to arouse him.

He never saw the same girl twice. Once she was done with him, he was likewise done with her. The business of the boarding house meant that some of these young girls were kicked out due to unsavory lifestyles and his mother found out, or they'd run off to greener pastures.

A higher paying job or marriage being the most innocent of these reasons for leaving.

Those who stayed knew exactly how Dylan had behaved. The twins had kept his secret. They never breathed a word of it to his mother and Dylan was always careful when he fooled around. Sex talk with older boys had terrified him about the various things he could catch. They least of which was fatherhood. He didn't want to be tied down to any of these horrible creatures he'd grown to hate. Creatures who would stomp around upstairs and run water at all hours of the night.

Norman remained fascinated, but Dylan had grown to detest them. The mystery was gone for him. The allure of what was under those skirts; under those sweaters. He saw a whole other side to women he didn't like. That not all of them were like his mother. They weren't naturally clean in their appearance and domestic life. Their bedrooms looked like a closet exploded and often smelled overly perfumed to try and cover the fact that they hadn't washed their clothes enough.

Their bodies weren't as beautiful as Dylan had hoped for either. One woman drunkenly explaining with a laugh that the scar on her belly was where the doctor had cut the baby out of her. She had been the one, the run away mother of three boys, who'd taught Dylan much about the sexual arts. Forcing him to ejaculate even when he didn't want to. Her corse hands were too rough and she wasn't the kind of woman he wanted to be around at all. Yet, she seemed to make his body do things, almost against his will. She told him that she would tell his mother he was fooling around with the girls upstairs if he didn't come back and do these things with her again. She told him she would even tell the police and he would be arrested.

Dylan believed her and complied with her wishes and demands. Her body, sagging and boney in places that made him uncomfortable, smelling like mildew when she ground on him night after night.

That woman was soon gone, but always replaced by another who seemed to have leverage over him. Who seemed to be able to control him. He had to get away. Escape from this world of women who pulled on him, cat called him, and used him.

So, it had felt like a relief to leave his mother's house of cursed sirens and join the Air Force. A world regulated and controlled by regulations and orders, not silly mind games and braying laughter.

He'd liked Colonel Romero right away. Romero hadn't yelled at anyone, but spoke with a calm tone which Dylan wasn't used to having grown men do with him. Most men in his life had barked at him. Towered their powerful bodies over him and beat him if he talked back, misbehaved or didn't do some chore fast enough.

The Colonel had gotten to know each new recruit in turn and even wanted to look at Dylan's sketchbook when he spotted him drawing one rainy afternoon.

"It's a farm. I'm… when I get out… I was thinking of buying some land. Nothing fancy. Just grow stuff to live off of." he explained while the Colonel looked over the sketch of a barn and a little farm house.

Romero had nodded.

"Lot of men just want a peaceful life after they get out." he said and handed back the sketchbook. "I know I do."

"You planning to retire, Colonel?" Dylan had asked with a smile. He couldn't imagine a man like Romero ever being a civilian.

The Colonel had seemed thoughtful.  
"It was always the plan, Airman." he shrugged. "The Air Force just kept promoting me. Besides, someone has to train all of you in case there's a war."

They had a decent talk about Hitler and what he was doing. The Colonel naturally knowing much more than Dylan did about world events and politics.

"Hitler and his supporters; they are just a bunch of bullies. Uneducated, entitled, cry babies who's mothers didn't teach them right from wrong." Romero had said soberly. "But you know as well as I do that every schoolyard bully can be dangerous if left unchecked."

"Yes, Sir." Dylan nodded. He knew then, at that moment, America would enter the war. That all of Europe would be involved very soon.

This was what the Colonel was telling him now.

Soon enough, in September, the BBC announced that England was at war with Germany. It had happened sooner than Dylan had thought possible.

He'd already finished his basic training and his mother was brushing off his uniform at the graduation ceremony. She'd worn the special ' _Mother_ ' brooch he and Norman had gotten her, and was beaming with pride.

When he'd introduced her to Colonel Romero, a part of him hoped they might be more friendly to one another. After all, the Colonel was unmarried and so was his mother. The two of them looked attractive together, and he liked the Colonel. It was a nice idea, the two of them together. Even if they just had coffee on occasion.

But she had stiffened and kept a cold distance from him. Dylan understood why. His mother had grown to hate and distrust men. His step-father, Sam, who'd forced him to take his last name, had been cruel to her. He drank too much and beat her. Got himself killed while out with his mistress and at least had the decency to leave them provided for.

She hadn't wanted or needed a replacement husband the way some women did. Some women, Dylan had observed, couldn't survive without a man, any man, in their lives. They had to have a warm blooded member of the male gender of their species who was of reasonable age, not too ugly and not terribly poor. That was all the qualifications most women his mother's age needed.

It wasn't so much financial security maybe, but a feeling of success by proxy. That they only had value if someone else deemed them worthy. Dylan thought it must be a horrible way to think of yourself. To have no identity, status or self worth other than what a relationship gave you.

His mother was now financially secure and didn't have the need for any such nonsense. She could do as she pleased and it pleased her very much to do whatever she wanted. To never have to ask for anyone's permission.

Dylan and Norman observed the stylish new wardrobe that were aways full of color now. Saw that she ate better foods and that the worry lines on her face were slowly vanishing. She smiled more readily now and was in a better mood with Sam gone and their future looking brighter.

It wasn't at all like her to re-marry and put herself back into a position of having to be subservient to a husband. To cook what he wanted, dress how he wanted and clean up after him. Unless her and Colonel Romero had had some kind of whirlwind romance and kept it from him, this was all a big misunderstanding.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

~ The plane crash was horrible. His bones would hurt just from the memory of it. Gliding over the autumn fields without gas, knowing he would crash, Alex could sense that death was near. It was strange how calm he felt. How he no longer had the will to survive anymore. It was as if his young life had been a very long, bad day and he was tired. Death would only be like a long sleep after all. It wouldn't be so bad.

He accepted that the plane would crash in these lonely empty French fields. That his body would break and probably die. That the whole thing might be long and painful. He'd accepted it though. Besides, if the rough landing didn't kill him, that shot to the chest surly would.

He could hear the wind now. Not the sounds of the engines and he tired to keep the nose up. Tired to slow his approach to the ground. He would land, like it or not, in a corn field that had been allowed to fallow after harvest. His body would be pulled out and burned or buried in secret. Just another American lost in action. Presumed dead.

He suddenly felt a rush of panic as the ground raced towards him too fast. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die here in this cold French field. He wanted to die in his own warm bed. Maybe with a sweet wife who'd loved him all his live and a pack of grown children who would be lost without their father. That was how a man should die. Not like this. Not here and not like this.

Then the impact happened and it was worse than he thought it would be. He was surprised he didn't break his teeth he'd gritted them so hard.

Alex could feel his body hurt, even after the crash. His muscles not wanting to relax now that the trauma was over. He couldn't seem to control his breathing either. Deep, panicked breathes that made him glad no one else could see. He was in a withered field miles from the enemy lines. Or so he'd hoped.

He moved his toes and legs. His right legs feeling heavier than before but it hurt with a dull thud from the impact of his plane.

 _'_ _I have to get out of here.'_ he thought to himself. _'Get out of this cockpit; before they find me.'_

He had been shot at, his co-pilot killed and those awful waves of panic were back. Wanting to pull him under and drown him. Wanting him to die here now that he'd actually survived.

 _'_ _If they find me, they'll kill me. They won't kill me slowly either.'_ he thought miserably. He tried to move, tried to shift his weight, but he couldn't maneuver out.

"Hey, it's alright." a voice was saying. It was a woman's voice. Had be been discovered by a farmer's wife? Could he convince her to hide him? He'd shot at enemy soldiers from they air, they'd seen his plane go down. He'd managed to take out a small line of troops marching just as he was running out of gas. They'd fired back at him and…

 _'_ _Oh, God. I'm shot.'_ he thought. _'I'm bleeding. Help me!'_

"Mon… Mon nom est, Alexander. S'il vous plait, aidez-moi, s'il vous plait." he said feeling his throat was dry and scratchy.

"You're safe. You're safe now." the woman was saying. Alex opened his eyes and light flooded his in. The woman's face was swimming into view and she was beautiful. Her blond hair shimmering like sunlight, and her eyes sparkling like the ocean.

"Je suis abattu. Je saigne." he said.

"I don't understand you." she said sadly.

Why didn't she understand him? He was telling her plainly his name and to help him. That he'd been shot and he was bleeding.

"Sil vous plait, Je suis American. S'il vous plait." he said. Maybe she would run to the village and get a doctor if she knew an American had been shot down. He didn't want to bleed to death. Maybe they could help him. He didn't want to die here.

"Alexander?" the woman said in a calm but very stern voice. "You're in America. You need to speak English."

Suddenly, his cockpit melted away and the dreary countryside evaporated into a warm bedroom flooded with sunlight.

"You're in America. You're perfectly safe and you need to speak English, Colonel." the blond woman was telling him.

She was still beautiful, but her expression was concerned and determined.

"Oh." he said at last. His memory of the past twenty years came flooding back. The Great War ending, returning home to find home wasn't home anymore. He moved a hand over to his chest and felt the puckered flesh of the long healed bullet wound he'd lived through. A memento from enemy fire over just over Belgium.

His plane had been shot at, run out of gas and he'd managed to stumble away from the crash, only to realize he'd been shot in the chest during the fire. A teenage farm girl had found him, roused her father and brother and they had smuggled him to safety in a pile of hay. His wounds left unnoticed for days until it started to smell bad.

When he arrived at the Red Cross, the doctors didn't waste pain medicine on him and told him he won't live past the night. He'd managed to make it a week before the errant bullet pushed it's way back out again. An agonizing torture of the foreign metal being expelled by his body through the same hole it came out of.

It had left a hellish scar in its' wake. Wounds Alex had doctored himself because the medical staff had left him for dead.

A week later, he was on a transport ship and two weeks after that, he was in another plane. Glad to be back to normal and never talking about the incident again. He'd felt he'd come off badly in the whole situation. War was nothing at all like the novels he'd read as a boy. It wasn't _'Last of the Mohicans'_ or any of the silly tales of the revolutionary war.

War, real war, was being hungry and tired all the time. It was eating bad food and always being cold and lonely. Always wanting to go home and knowing you could die at any time. You could die at the hands of a sixteen year old farm kid who didn't know any better and was just lucky enough to get the jump on you.

Alex was luckier than most. He was an officer thanks to the college education he'd afforded himself. Put into rank as a leader and made a Captain within a year due to valor.

The military called what he did valor. Alex called it foolishness. Tempting death to come and get him. He'd spent the entire war in a constant stare of depression. Always willing death to come for him because he didn't want to live anymore.

There was a pretty girl back home he'd spontaneously married after dating her for only a few weeks. Perhaps it was the romance of going off to war and wanting someone to wait for him, love him, pine for him, but Alex had wanted to marry her. Wanted to believe in the happy ending that was granted to all foolish young people in love. Then, she had sent him a letter saying she was divorcing him. That she'd met someone else. Some lawyer who was taking her to Chicago and they would live in a nice house. That she wouldn't have to wait for a war to end to have a home and a baby and that they didn't really know each other after all. She'd sent him the divorce papers and he'd signed them after they'd been hitched for less than six months.

His only family back home was dead or wanted little to do with him. So, he didn't see much of a reason to go on living, and started acting recklessly. He volunteered for dangerous missions. Recon and things that might get him killed. Who would miss him if he just fell off this earth anyway?

It wasn't until that awful crash when he'd been broken, shot and dying that, he decided he was, like it or not, destined to live. That he'd been fated to be one of the lucky ones after all. The old men playing cards on a sunny back porch with grandchildren all around him and the love of his life bossing him around.

This realization came to him just as the war ended. Alex Romero was a hero with medals, rank and bullet wounds to prove it. He'd asked for and was given a position training young Airmen to fly. He'd hoped, the most they would have to do with this trade was dust crops. That not another war would come and disturb the peace.

Then all this nonsense with Hitler started. A dangerous man who spat fire and incited people. He cause alarm among the short sighted and simple minded. Caused them to be enraged over some imagined injustice. He was a reactionist. No different from other mad tyrants over the course of history.

Alex had confidence people would see this, but no one seemed to. They seemed to be growing in number now. Growing in masses like a rapidly mutating virus.

"You're safe." the blond woman was saying again.

"Where… where am I?" Alex said slowly. English sounding funny to him for some reason. He could hear noises outside a window. Hear water pipes from somewhere. Hear footfalls from a floor above them.

"You're in my apartment, Colonel." the woman said and shifted away from him. She still looked concerned.

"Your apartment?" Alex questioned and looked around him.

He was in a large room with green patterned wallpaper. The kind that was meant to make an impression but was making him feel enclosed and the air press out of his chest.

He pushed the bed cover off and saw to his horror the white cast encasing his leg past the knee. He also realized he was in a hospital gown.

He threw the covers back on him. The draft of air hitting him made it clear he wasn't wearing anything under his thin hospital gown.

"What happened? Where the hell are my clothes? Who are you?" he demanded. He tried to move but winced in pain. The shooting pain stabbing him through the leg.

"You need to be careful, Colonel." the blond woman said moving off her seat on his bed. "Move slowly. My son Dylan broke his leg when he was five jumping out of a tree. He saw a monkey at the zoo do it; figured he could to."

He tone was slightly annoyed by the childish arrogance of a five year old boy.

"Who are you?" Alex breathed feeling that nauseating panic settle deep inside him; that old friend of his from the war. She was an attractive enough woman. Clearly an American who wasn't hurting him, but his memories were all jumbled up. Was he captured? Had she hurt him? Was she going to hurt him?

"I'm Norma Bates." she said calmly. "I told you this already when you woke up an hour ago. You were barking some other language at me before you started muttering in French. How many languages do you speak anyway?"

Her nose wrinkled in slight disgust but he had no memory at all of what she was talking about.

"You're at my boarding house." she said with an eye roll. "You were brought here by mistake after the fire at the base. You broke your leg when you were hit by a car."  
"Why am I here?" he demanded. He didn't remember any fire or being hit by a car. He wasn't sure what his last memory was. Crashing just off of the French boarder maybe. A bullet wound to his chest. Blood and pain. A blond woman telling him he was safe.

That annoyed look was back on her face again.

"There seems to be a mix up. We're getting it straitened out." she promised. Her voice was soft and angelic and she seemed very sincere.

"Mix up." Alex repeated. She nodded.

"They were supposed to bring my son home. He was injured in the fire to. Instead they brought you." she nodded at his entire body as if it offended her.

"I need a phone." he said curtly. "I need to make a phone call."

"The only phone we have is in the foyer and it is now…" she looked at her watch. "Six o'clock. That means my girls will be dominating all the payphone and the incoming phone at the front desk until past 8 o'clock."

"I'll make my call then." he said sourly. He could feel an embarrassing bodily need creep into his conscious mind.  
"Well, if it make you feel better, I already called the hospital. They seemed to have mixed up your paperwork. I also called the base, but the fire has made getting the right person to talk to nearly impossible." she explained storming out of the bedroom he was stranded in.

It was a good size room, part of it devoted to sleeping, the to sewing. A bright red singer sewing machine sat gleaming on the nearby table with a pile of dresses and sheets that wanted mending.

"Um…" Alex said shifting uncomfortably. He didn't want to express to this strange woman that he need to go to the bathroom. That the need was becoming critical and he could hardly maneuver around the bed.

She seemed to have read his mind though. She arrived back in the bedroom with no door holding a cane.

"I don't have a wheelchair for you, Colonel. This will have to do. The hospital said you were already in a walking cast so I'm guessing the break wasn't that bad. I want you to use the facilities, clean yourself up and I've already got dinner started." she said with a briskness that he appreciated. He always liked the efficient nature of the military. Being told when to get up, what to wear, what to eat, what to do, where to go. He was a man of structure who didn't like to feel idle.

It struck him then as she was slowly helping him maneuver his cast off the bed and wrapping a bathrobe around him that he'd met her before.

"Norma Bates." he said once she'd finally gotten him to stand. He'd winced at the sharp pain of movement but appreciated he had some mobility now.

"You're Dylan Bates' mother. I remember you. You wore red." he hadn't meant it to be accusing, but it sounded like it to his own ears. What must it have sounded like to her?

Norma Bates gave him a terse smile before helping him hobble into the bathroom.  
"I've got a toothbrush for you and a razor. I think it's best you keep using Norman's bathrobe for now, but I've already had Dorothy bring you pajamas from the shop around the corner. After you're cleaned up and had something in your stomach, I can give you a pain pill." she said. "I'll be just outside the door if you need me."

She closed the bathroom door behind her and Alex wanted to die for the first time in twenty years.

~ Shockingly, the entire bathroom endeavor had gone much better than he thought. He'd heroically given himself a strip wash, shaved, brushed his teeth and feel almost human again when he stumbled his way awkwardly out of the bathroom.

The new pajamas felt heavy but it was better than the hospital gown. A thing that already stank of sweat and disinfectant.

Dinner smelled wonderful. Whatever this woman was cooking, he couldn't complain about the accommodations. Her home was small, but lovely. Bright bursts of color were everywhere and reminded him of the cozy apartments he'd visited in Paris. Little homes that were chic and beautiful. Always full of character and class. Always ready to entertain and settle into candle lit dinners with long conversations.

No one minding the cramped quarters or the fact the meals took so long to finish. Their were party games to play and wild stories to exaggerate on. Pretty French girls with their long dark hair, pale skin and slender bodies like dancers. Women who tormented Alex with delightful expertise and making everyone laugh. Women who told him how they had made grand plans for him and they would kidnap him and marry him and he would never see his silly America again. How he would grow fat and happy in France and lose all his hair and whoever married him would stay young and beautiful.

"Est-ce vrai?" he'd laugh. The whole notion was humorous.

"Oui." the pretty girl pouted. "Je vois l'avenir."

Alex looked spurred when she told him she knew his future. She pouted further and looked like a spoiled child before curing up on his lap. She told him in her chattering French how he had to stay here with her because he would be a lonely bachelor and only a lonely widow would want him when he was an old man passed forty- five.

"Reste ici." she had meowed. Going on about American women and how they wouldn't appreciate her 'Alexander'.

"What are you smiling at?" the Norma Bates woman asked.

Alex felt alarmed that his memory of his time in France had felt so vivid. He'd been so young then. Barely in his twenties and the world was becoming small to him. So small he wanted to flee from it. He was underweight from near starvation during the war and now that it was over, it was all too tempting to stay with his beautiful chattering French girl who would love him intensely for a little while. Then, like all frivolous young women, she would grow board with him; then forget him. As if he was an out of fashion dress she no longer wanted. She would tell him, through a hail of fake tears how sorry she was but she'd fallen in love with another.

That… that was almost exactly what had happened to. But Alex didn't wait for her apology.

"The French girls…" he corrected himself quickly. 'French Girls' sent the wrong message. "The ladies in France had apartments like this." he nodded to Norma Bates' fine furniture. Her writing desk with organized papers and letters. Her matching art deco living room chairs and love seat. The crisp blue wallpaper and the traditional mirror over the fire's mantle.

Norma eyed him suspiciously and nodded for him to sit at her table. She'd prepared some kind of casserole for them and it was spotted with green vegetables and made his mouth water.

"You spent a lot of time with French girls? In their apartments I mean?" Norma asked snapping a cloth napkin over Alex's lap and handing him a jade green plate loaded with food.

Alex nodded.

"I served in the Great War. I was shot down in France." he admitted. "Soon enough, the war was over. I'd made a lot of friends and they liked to have dinners at their homes."

Norma looked less suspicious now and more curious.

"You were… shot down? In your plane you were shot down?" she asked.

Alex nodded. Her cooking was delicious. She allowed him to eat in peace for a while.

"I think, when I woke up, I was dreaming about it." he admitted. "Maybe that was why I was talking in French."

"What were you saying anyway?" she asked. Her face looking worried.

Alex shook his head.

"It doesn't matter." he didn't want her to worry about him. His wounds had happened a long time ago. He'd been healed.

Loud shouting and thunderous footsteps were suddenly all around them. The light over Norma's dining table waved slightly and Alex looked at her in alarm. Were they being invaded?

"The girls must be finished with dinner." she said awkwardly.  
"Yes, you said we're in a boarding house?" Alex questioned. Now that hunger had been stayed he had to address the real issue.

"I did. It's my boarding house. It's for young women and I won't have you going out in just a bathrobe and night clothes, Colonel. Those girls will see you and as far as anyone knows, my son Norman is convalescing here with me. I can't have it known a strange man is here dressed like that. My reputation is at stake." she explained quickly.

"I need to call my superiors. Let them know what happened. I can be out of your hair faster that way, Mrs. Bates." he told her.

She pulled out a bottle of pills and placed on the table next to his plate.

"You can make you call in the morning." she promised. "The girls are too active right now, I can't have them see you. It's just for tonight, Colonel."


	6. Chapter 6

6.

~ Emma wanted to buy a radio. The cheapest portable radio she could find was a simple contraption costing $17 and that was almost two months rent. Nearly all her money had evaporated as soon as she rented her room and stepped outside to buy a few sundries.

She'd bought new soap for her little sink, shampoo and new stalkings for work. She'd explored the neighborhood a little. The laundry that Dorthy had told her about charged her by the pound to wash her clothes, but she didn't like the way the course looking woman glared at her. The laundress here might rip or tear her work clothes and then where would Emma be?

She bought washing power instead and figured she could rise out her dresses as needed.

At the drug store that sold her the washing powder and new soap, she also bought a bargain stack of identical postcards with the golden gate bridge painted on it. San Fransisco was blazoned over this idlic scene in bold letters in case anyone didn't know the location of the bridge.

Emma needed postcards to write to her friends back at the secretary school and her old boarding house. Just in case anyone needed to look her up. She'd sat and paid for a graduation group portrait at school and it would be mailed to her in a few months after all the pictures were finally developed. She wondered intently what she looked like in the school picture. Twenty girls graduated with her and they were all arranged in neat little rows with Emma seated at the very end. She'd always felt she looked out of place in pictures and wondered if it would forever show.

~ The boarding house was like a living thing. Not just a building but more like a beehive. Something that, without it's inhabitants, would actually die and turn to dust.

When Emma came back, her arms heavy with purchases, it was to a rush of noise. Girls locked inside the wooded phone booths with others waiting outside to make their calls. The front room busy with activity and a disjointed song being played on the piano. Smells of dinner being made ready were flooding the front foyer and Emma instantly felt hungry.

She raced upstairs, changed her dress and came back down again. It was almost time for dinner and she'd been so busy that day, she hadn't thought to even eat. The third floor, where her little room was located, was just as alive as the ground floor. All the girls had their doors open and Emma could smell the strong scents of various perfumes.

Music from little radios blared out of each room or sometimes it was just the news. No matter what Dorothy had told her, the girls here didn't wear robes in the hallways. They barely wore anything at all. They wore silk slips showing off their breasts in full motion; all of them unencumbered by bras. Some of them raced out of the bathroom naked and back to their room, their hair tied up neatly in rollers.

The women here were young and old. Some barely teenagers and some full of graying hair. The graying ones were kept on the second floor and complained constantly about the noise the younger girls made.

The third floor did make an awful lot of noise in the evenings and even though Emma had shared a large attic room and an orphanage with rowdy girls before, she wasn't prepared for the obscene nature of what she was seeing now.

The girls smoked at the open window by the bathroom and passed a bottle of booze back and forth. The sat perched on the open fire escape wearing hardly anything at all. Darling someone to say something.

Emma had stashed her new items in her room, worried about thieves a little and wondered if she dared to pass by these frighting looking girls just to go to the bathroom.  
"You're new." a blond girl said. She was in a robe so sheer Emma wondered why she even bothered. The robe was heavily decorated with golden dragons and green and blue flowers.

"I'm Emma." Emma said looking at the hypnotic beauty of the blond girls clothing. The girl was beautiful herself. Perfect face and skin. She had a slender body, but she was wearing just her underwear and black stocking with expensive high heeled shoes as she leaned out the window. Her bra obviously belonging to someone else as it was too large for her small frame.

"I'm Bradley." the blond girl said coolly. "What brings you to San Fransisco? You here to be an actress?"

Emma had to laugh. What a silly idea.

"No." she said.  
"I'm here to be an actress. I'm in a production of " _A Midsummers Night Dream_ " down at the Galla Theater. You should come by." Bradley said.

Emma wasn't sure if she was kidding or not. She'd never been to the theater before.

"It's important to get work on stage before you try to make it on the big screen." Bradley said holding her cigarette in her long fingers with the expert pose of any movie star.

Emma had her doubts about this girl being an actress on stage or on screen. She was beautiful, but on closer inspection she looked washed out and there were bags under her eyes. It was clear she wasn't taking care of herself. Emma knew nothing about acting, but she knew starlets had to take care of their appearance.

"You read ' _Photoplay_ '?" Bradley asked and Emma shook her head.

"I always get the new issues before anyone else." Bradley said lazily. "Come by my room after dinner. You can pick out pictures for your wall." She stood up, stubbed out her cigarette and stretched. Her sheer red robe was beautiful on her body now.

Bradley had caught Emma looking at her.  
"A fan sent it to me last week." she said carelessly showing off the silky fabric. "Some old guy. I think he got it in China Town. Nice right? Where do you work?"

"The war office." Emma said quickly. "Stenography."

"What the hell is that?" one of the other girls asked. A gaggle of laughter rang out but Bradley didn't laugh. She just looked at Emma as though she were a piece of art in a museum.

"I take dictation. Telegraphs mainly." Emma told them feeling uncomfortable.

"You had to go to school for that?" Bradley asked. Her voice was more like an accusation.

"Yeah." Emma said feeling uncomfortable.

"Wish I'd been able to go to school." Bradley said coldly. "I had to leave home two years ago after my dad died."

"Oh." Emma said. She wanted to tell this girl how she also lost her father but couldn't. This girl looked confident, yet too fragile to share anything with. Like beautiful crystal that would shatter if exposed to any kind of pressure.

A ball rang from downstairs and like a heard of cattle, the girls raced to their rooms, throwing dresses on over their underthings and then stampeded down to dinner.

Emma and Bradley just started at each other.

"Chows on." Bradley said sleepily.

~ Emma liked Bradly Martian right away. Being around this new friend was like peeping behind the curtain and seeing a whole other world she didn't know was there.

Bradley seemed to like a perpetual tourist in the city. She wanted to see everything and spend money she didn't have. She wanted to eat exotic foods and wear the latest fashions. She grew tired of her friends just as rapidly as she grew tired of the most recent edition of a celebrity magazine.

She had no real friends, Emma noticed, only a perpetual fan club that liked to adore her. Just now, Bradley had taken to focusing on Emma, although no one knew why.

"My name isn't really Bradley Martian." was one of the first things the blond girl told Emma as she walked in her expensive high heels and silk stalkings up to a trendy cafe. She was Emma's age, still technically a teenager, but looked, acted and dressed like a woman.

When Emma asked where she bought her clothes, Bradley shrugged and said they were gifts from her fans.

"I picked out that name." Bradley went on. "Like how Judy Garland isn't her real name either. Her real name is Frances Gumm. Those aren't her real teeth either. She wore false teeth until they could get them fixed. See, no one wants to hear someone named Frances Gumm sing ' _Somewhere over the Rainbow_ '. Do they?"

Emma was having trouble keeping up.

"That's Hollywood. Nothing is real." Bradley said. "I had this book from the library all about the smoke and mirror effects they use. It's all a scam. Anyone with a camera can shoot a movie in their backyard. They just make a few props and that's it."

Emma doubted this. She'd seen the ' _Wizard of Oz_ " and ' _Gone with the Wind_ '. They certainly weren't shot in someone's back yard.

"I didn't change my name just to be in the movies though." Bradley told her. She was wearing a white pair of bakelite sunglasses that made her look very glamorous and had an expensive looking purse swinging from her wrist. "After my dad died, my mom married this creep. Didn't wait very long at all to replace him. So, I moved out here to California and changed my name so they couldn't find me. See, I've got it all worked out; I'm going to be a famous stage actress for a while. I'm going to marry rich, divorce in a scandal like all the starlets do, and break into pictures. By then, no one back home will recognize me. I'll have my jaw buckled to make my face look slimmer. I'll be a big movie star like Joan Crawford in "The Bride Wore Red"."

Emma's eyes must have gone wide because Bradley nodded.

"She was so sophisticated in that movie. That's exactly the role I want to play. A nothing girl manages to fool everyone."

Bradley was obviously a regular at this little cafe because she was waved to a table right away and the two talked for a while about the city and what their plans were.

"Spelling?" Bradley almost choked with laughter. "Really? That paid for your schooling?"

"Yeah." Emma nodded. "I got to go on tours and see the country."

"You must be really smart." Bradley said appreciatively.  
"Well, I didn't finish high school." Emma said sadly.

"You can take night classes down here." Bradley shrugged. "A lot of the girls do it. They had to leave school to get a job to help the family. Then the family was done with them and kicked them out. So now they need an education to support just themselves. Blair Watson is the night school teacher. She lives on the second floor with all the other old biddies. She's not even that old, she just acts old. But I know people; she's got skeleton's in her closet. It's why she teaches night school now."

Emma couldn't help herself. She knew she shouldn't gossip but she wanted to know.

"What kind of skeletons?" she asked.

"Word is she was fooling around with a bunch of men. One of them younger. Like the age of one of her students. The other girls were even saying that Mrs. Bates' son was one of her lovers. Back when he was too young to be doing that with a grown woman. He's grown now, but if Mrs. Bates found out, she would have called the law. Or hacked her up with a kitchen knife." Bradley said smartly.

Emma felt herself stop breathing. She'd met Blair Watson. A very attractive woman who looked like Betty Grable. It was hard to imagine her as a teacher. Not with the nice clothes she wore and her neatly coifed hair style.

"Her father is some wealthy investor." Bradley said as if she could read Emma's mind. "Sends her money for clothes. He writes to Mrs. Bates making sure his daughter still lives there and pays for her rent himself."

"Oh." Emma said feeling shocked.

Bradley didn't eat much, just coffee and dry toast with an orange. Emma was finding her appetite was growing by the second now that she was in California. All the sunshine and fresh air was making her body work overtime. She was sleeping better and when she woke up, no matter how much she ate the night before at dinner, she was always famished.

"You should take up smoking." Bradley said pointing to Emma's sandwich and chips with a judgmental nod. "It'll kill your appetite. Smoking makes you look sexy to. All the stars smoke."

~ Bradley decided Emma needed her picture taken now that she'd moved to California.

"You're in a new county. You're like an explorer. We need documentation." was her reasoning when they rang on the doorbell of a house with a hand painted ' _photography_ ' sign in the window. The upstairs window flew open and a gangly young man shouted down at them.

"How much?" Bradley demanded as pedestrians passed them by. She pointed to the window with the sign.  
"It's fifty cents for two shots. You pick them up tomorrow. I'm almost done with the roll and I have my own dark room here."

"Fifty cents?" Emma asked doubtfully. She'd been walking all day and this wasn't her best dress.

"Yeah. It's a good price." Bradley told her. "Sold!" she shouted up to the boy. The gangly young man was downstairs soon enough looking sleepy and annoyed.

"I take pictures in the park across the street. We need to do this soon. The light is fading. Stand over by that tree." he ordered Bradley as the small party crossed the street.

"No me." Bradley said and rolled her eyes. "Her."

The gangly young man looked at Emma appraisingly.  
"Okay." he said as if he would have to work a little harder now. "Um… yeah, stand over here by that tree."

Emma felt uncomfortable and Bradly swooped in to adjust her hair.  
"You need to let me fix your hair." she said while she repined it in a way Emma wasn't used to.

"Okay. Ready?" the young man asked.

Emma smiled uncomfortably while standing next to a tree while people were playing and minding their own business.

The young man snapped one more. Asked her name, took her two quarters and wrote her a receipt.

"You like the pictures, I'll make you re-prints for half the price." he told her. "Come by tomorrow after five."

"Now you'll have something to remember your first week in your new home." Bradley said gleefully.

Emma looked at the piece of paper and thought the whole endeavor was a waste of money. She wasn't like Bradley who was now suggesting they go shopping for better clothes. She actually had to work for her money. She couldn't just look pretty on a stage and say silly lines. She didn't have men fall all over her and buy her gifts just for being pretty and enjoying her plays.

Deep down though, Emma knew these fans of Bradley didn't buy her these things because they liked her acting. That Bradley didn't make her money just from acting in a small theater production. She didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to think of her friend like that. That bad word that and that bad thing girls must never do.

But what other explanation was there?

"Come on." Bradley was saying. "Let's pick you out a new dress. I know a great shop."


End file.
